August breaks a streak that has been going on for 10 months

August has come to an end and so too ends meteorological summer. We’ll talk more about the crazy summer that was this year in a future blog post on the Weather Notebook. This entry we are focusing on the month of August.

August was by far the most comfortable month of the 2012 summer. Yeah, there was still some heat. The first few days of the month were in the 90s, but then things changed. Temperatures became much cooler in the 70s and a few 80s sprinkled in there through most of the middle of the month. On the 16th of August, we barely hit 70 degrees. There were also some very chilly mornings in the middle of the month. There was a string of six days we woke up to lows in the 40s with some 30s even up in the north.

Below is a look at low and high temperatures in relation to normal low and high temperatures along with record high and low temperatures for Eau Claire.

It wouldn’t have been 2012 without breaking at least one high temperature record in August. Eau Claire tied the record of 97° on August 30th. La Crosse broke the record of 94° for that date by topping out at 97° as well.

Despite the warmer end of the month and even record heat both Eau Claire and La Crosse ended the month slightly below normal when it came to average temperature. Eau Claire was down by -.2° and La Crosse was down by -.4°.

This is kind of a big deal because this is the first time both cities have had a below normal month when it comes to temperatures since September 2011. That means we had a streak of 10 months that were above normal! Wow!

Unfortunately, although August was cooler than normal, it was still another below normal month when it came to precipitation. Eau Claire picked up 2.06”. That makes for a deficit of -2.41”. La Crosse also had a deficit of more than 2 inches. This is definitely not good news for the drought situation. The drought hasn’t really gotten worse, but it hasn’t got any better. We’ll have to see what September brings. Below is a look at the departure from normal when it comes to accumulated precipitation in the Midwest.

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